A top psychosexual therapist is warning about a surge in the number of young men suffering sexual health problems because of online pornography.

Angela Gregory says more and more men in their late teens and early 20s are suffering from erectile dysfunction. She puts the blame on people becoming addicted to watching online porn. There are no official figures but she says a lot of the time it is via smartphones and laptops.

“What I’ve seen over the last 16 years, particularly the last five years, is an increase in the amount of younger men being referred,” she said. “Our experience is that historically men that were referred to our clinic with problems with erectile dysfunction were older men whose issues were related to diabetes, MS, cardio vascular disease. These younger men do not have organic disease, they’ve already been tested by their GP and everything is fine.

“So one of the first assessment questions I’d always ask now is about pornography and masturbatory habit because that can be the cause of their issues about maintaining an erection with a partner.”